RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • The KIDS Act would put Washington in charge of how we can communicate online

    Source: Expression
    by Carolyn Iodice & John Coleman

    “For decades, Americans have enjoyed broad freedom to build tools to communicate with each other on the internet. From the smallest message board to the biggest social media platform, the First Amendment protects our right to freely design and use platforms to talk and share content with each other online. The government can go after wrongdoers that use online platforms for illegal activity, but it does not get to decide how a platform is designed and operated in the first place. The KIDS Act would fundamentally overturn this status quo by allowing the government to decide how platforms can be built and imposing restrictions that will censor the speech of adults and minors alike.” (06/29/26)

    https://expression.fire.org/p/the-kids-act-would-put-washington

  • Über Socialist: ChatGPT on Economic Freedom in Nazi Germany

    Source: Bet On It
    by Bryan Caplan

    “Qualitative history lends itself to confirmation bias. Even when you have some quantitative measures of economic policy, it’s easy to put extra weight on the measures that deliver the answer you’re looking for. I’m not immune to motivated reasoning. I loathe and despise both socialism and Nazism, so it’s pleasant for me to equate them. I freely admit it. What to do? I could spend a year reading more about this topic. I could even spend a few years getting to the research frontier so I could credibly publish on the question, ‘How socialist was Germany under National Socialism?’ But while this is a fascinating issue, the opportunity cost of seriously deepening my understanding is just too high. Or to be more precise, the opportunity cost was too high. AI has drastically slashed the costs of quantification — and simultaneously drastically increased the credibility of quick quantification.” (06/29/26)

    https://www.betonit.ai/p/uber-socialist-chatgpt-on-economic

  • Is Taiwan’s President Playing With Political Fire?

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Ted Galen Carpenter

    “Taiwan President Lai Ching-te (William Lai) appears to be missing signs from multiple sources that he lacks both international and domestic support for pursuing a more assertive policy regarding the island’s de facto independence. Taipei heavily depends on two protectors, Japan and the United States, for firm political support against Beijing’s periodic bullying tactics. In the event of a military crisis, Taiwan would be even more reliant on those two powers for armed defense. However, Tokyo and Washington seem to be moving in opposite directions with respect to their longstanding, albeit informal, security commitment to Taipei.” (06/29/26)

    https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2026/06/28/is-taiwans-president-playing-with-political-fire/

  • The Fallacy of Economic Predicting

    Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
    by Angelo Monaco

    “I recently submitted an article to The Future of Freedom Foundation that predicted a recession at the end of 2026. It was rejected because FFF’s editor, Jacob Hornberger, said ‘One of my beefs with economists is that they love making predictions but most often the predictions don’t pan out.’ I should have been incensed with the fact that after my decades of education and training as an economist and careful research and review of historical and present-day data, my forecast could be so easily dismissed. However, I remained basically un-phased. I suppose the reason I did not get angry is because I knew that he was right. Economists’ predictions are often wrong and any of their predictions that involve a glimpse too far into the future are statistically very close to being always wrong.” (06/29/26)

    https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-fallacy-of-economic-predicting/

  • The Poisonous Fruit Has Ripened

    Source: Underthrow
    by Max Borders

    “Recent democratic socialist victories in New York are a harbinger. Like an invasive species sent from the unproductive activist class, they have infiltrated politics at the highest levels of government. As if the creatures who have been ruling us weren’t bad enough, a fifty-year period of permitting socialist activists to take comfort in the academy is now yielding poisonous fruit. And as we celebrate the 250th birthday of America, the democratic socialists openly wipe their asses with America’s founding documents. That is, until election season, when the wolves don sheep’s clothing.” [editor’s note: The difference between a “democratic socialist” and a “mainstream American politician circa 2026” is that the former openly admit they’re socialists – TLK] (06/29/26)

    https://underthrow.substack.com/p/the-poisonous-fruit-has-ripened/comments

  • I went to Trump’s Great American State Fair so you don’t have to

    Source: The New Republic
    by Malcolm Ferguson

    “The opening weekend of the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., was, to put it simply, miserable. It was extremely muggy, with rain pouring down seemingly every hour. A child rolled around in the grass, crying and screaming, ‘I. WANT. TO. GO. HOME!!!’ Creed’s ‘Higher’ blared over the loudspeakers, and a sparse crowd milled about the various exhibitions. The bare-bones setup (flimsy, fake two-dimensional columns that looked like something Wile E. Coyote would run into while chasing the Road Runner) left much to be desired, as America’s 250th anniversary was celebrated with kitsch and ennui rather than grandeur and appreciation. More than anything, the event lacked energy—and people. There wasn’t any line or wait to get in. The vibe was more conference-like than celebratory, and the state exhibits varied wildly in effort and presentation.” (06/29/26)

    https://newrepublic.com/article/212455/trump-great-american-state-fair-review

  • On July 4, Will You be Celebrating the Founders or the Status Quo?

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by George Ford Smith

    “Ideologically, Americans went from Blackstone, to Coke, to Otis, to Paine, to the Declaration, to winning the war for independence (the latter two with Paine’s help). The undoing of this unprecedented victory for human liberty began in 1786 with the exploitation of a government-caused revolt called Shay’s Rebellion. Liberty has taken the hit ever since.” (06/29/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/july-4-will-you-be-celebrating-founders-or-status-quo

  • Trump wanted to break the system. The system is breaking him instead.

    Source: Washington Post
    by Ramesh Ponnuru

    “Trump acted as though voters chose him in 2024 because they loved everything about him, rather than because they hated inflation. Since winning, he has taken a few steps that place upward pressure on prices — warring with Iran, imposing tariffs, trying to push interest rates down by intimidating the Federal Reserve — and done little to foster the impression that he cares about the public’s top concern. In Trump’s popularity decline, we are also seeing the interaction of our constitutional system and a president who is neither interested in nor adept at working through it. A determined president can make the Justice Department issue frivolous indictments. He can’t make the courts respect them.” (06/29/26)

    https://archive.is/tnnkY